Sarah Broadhurst's view...

The mystery is at last revealed. For the first time, a complete Rumpole novel and one that takes us right back to the beginning as the old boy, writing his memoirs, actually tells of his first ‘famous’ murder case, often referred to over his many short stories. Devotees must have this, newcomers will find it a perfect place to start.

Synopsis

Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders by John Mortimer

Horace Rumpole - cigar-smoking, claret-drinking, Wordsworth-spouting defender of some unlikely clients - often speaks of the great murder trial which revealed his talents as an advocate and made his reputation down at the Bailey when he was still a young man. Now, for the first time, the sensational story of the Penge Bungalow Murders case is told in full: how, shortly after the war, Rumpole took on the seemingly impossible task of defending young Simon Jerold, accused of murdering his father and his father's friend with a German officer's gun. And how the inexperienced young brief was left alone to pursue the path of justice, in a case that was to echo through the Bailey for years to come.

About the Author

John Mortimer is a playwright, novelist and former practising barrister. During the war he worked with the Crown Film Unit and published a number of novels, before turning to theatre. He has written many film scripts, and plays both for radio and television, including A Voyage Round My Father, the Rumpole plays, which won him the British Academy Writer of the Year Award, and the adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. His many collections of Rumpole stories are published in Penguin, as well as a volume of his plays, two volumes of his acclaimed autobiography, Clinging to the Wreckage and Murderers and Other Friends, and In Character and Character Parts, which contain interviews with some of the most famous men and women of our time. His novels include Summer's Lease, Paradise Postponed , Titmuss Regained (its sequel), Under the Hammer, all of which have been made into successful television series, Charade, Dunster, and Felix in the Underworld.